Posts filed under 'Citizen Media'

Michael Maier, former Shorenstein Fellow and founder and CEO of the German company Blogform Publishing, joined the Berkman Luncheon Series on September 25 to present on the next generation of digital media platforms in his talk: “Participation, Design, Search: How the Internet is Transforming.”

Michael’s thoughts centered on the idea that digital magazines are starting to pick up, by bringing editorial structure and integrated publishing. Search will not remain Google’s monopoly. The Internet is transforming from an experimental space to a quite mature and professional platform. The next generation (which is today’s) of innovation will introduce more sustainable models and hence change the old media much more than the shockwaves of Web 1.0.

This afternoon Michael Maier, former Shorenstein Fellow and founder and CEO of the German company Blogform Publishing, joined the Berkman Luncheon Series to present on the next generation of digital media platforms in his talk: “Participation, Design, Search: How the Internet is Transforming.”

Michael’s thoughts centered on the idea that digital magazines are starting to pick up, by bringing editorial structure and integrated publishing. Search will not remain Google’s monopoly. The Internet is transforming from an experimental space to a quite mature and professional platform. The next generation (which is today’s) of innovation will introduce more sustainable models and hence change the old media much more than the shockwaves of Web 1.0.

How can University sponsored events leverage their reach, build communities and keep the conversations going after the conference ends? Using as a case study the Dred Scott conference held by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice in April, we will discuss how history relates to the present and future. We will consider how the internet and new technologies can help universities as they work to convene social and cultural gatherings (as opposed to purely academic).

David is a co-author of the national best-seller The Cluetrain Manifesto, has written for Wired, Salon, USA Today, and The Guardian, and in 2004, served as Senior Internet Advisor to the Howard Dean Campaign.

About The Book

For 2,500 years we’ve used the same principles for organizing information, ideas and knowledge that we use for putting away our laundry: Everything has its place, things are put with other things like it, it’s all neat and tidy. But as we move information on line, it no longer has to share the limits on the physical. We are rapidly inventing new principles of order, moving from newspapers to blogs, from encyclopedias to Wikipedia, from librarians to taggers. In fact, it turns out that the best way to manage digital information is *not* to have experts filter and sort it before hand, but to make a huge miscellaneous pile of it, include everything, and allow users to sort and organize it. This opens up new opportunities, but it fundamentally changes the nature of authority across all of our major institutions, including business, the media, science, education and government.

When Berkman Fellow and Chilling Effects founder Wendy Seltzer posted a Super Bowl clip to YouTube, she thought she’d get to teach a bit about copyright — the clip was the NFL’s warning that “Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL’s consent, is prohibited.” In series of DMCA notices, copyright takedowns, counter-notifications, and put-backs, Seltzer has found the process more convoluted than even she anticipated. Join the discussion at the Berkman Center about the free expression stakes in Viacom v. YouTube: copyright, safe-harbors, and Chilling Effects.

Brooklyn Law School, where she teaches Internet Law and Privacy. She was previously a staff attorney with Electronic Frontier Foundation, focused on intellectual property and free speech issues. She is a 1999 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1996 graduate of Harvard College.

Thanks to the pliability of bits and the connectedness of the Net, we’re now able to participate in our culture like never before. We can create a video and post it at sites like YouTube. We can watch a video and comment on it, tag it, link to it, mash it up with another video. We can build massive encyclopedias together. We can form clans to play games. We can build an island in SecondLife where we can interact in a world we’ve created together. But, is this burst of participation in culture leading to greater participation in politics and democracy? If so, what are the connecting points?

This video features David Weinberger leading a Web of Ideas discussion at the Berkman Center to explore these and other questions.

Thanks to the pliability of bits and the connectedness of the Net, we’re now able to participate in our culture like never before. We can create a video and post it at sites like YouTube. We can watch a video and comment on it, tag it, link to it, mash it up with another video. We can build massive encyclopedias together. We can form clans to play games. We can build an island in SecondLife where we can interact in a world we’ve created together. But, is this burst of participation in culture leading to greater participation in politics and democracy? If so, what are the connecting points?

On this edition of AudioBerkman, we’ll hear David Weinberger leading a Web of Ideas discussion at the Berkman Center to explore these and other questions.

On January 15th, 2007 the Sunlight Foundation and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society sponsored a day long working session titled “Local Political Information in an Internet Era.” The meeting was hosted by the Berkman Center on the Harvard Law School Campus. This short summary video features interviews with participants and spotlights some of the emerging technologies being used at the state and local level to engage citizens in the political process.

“We are interested in how the Internet — through blogs and other tools — can bring citizens more or better information about their elected officials. We have invited 10 bloggers who are focused on their own states’ federal and local elected officials, and about the same number of people who are working on tools that these local bloggers can use — tools like Congresspedia and Metavid (for getting video of Members of Congress).

Our goal is to connect the people working in the trenches with people working in other trenches and with new tools, so that everyone can do a better job sharing important political information with citizens.”

“Political Information in an Internet Era” was produced by Nisha Thompson (Sunlight Foundation) and Colin Rhinesmith (Berkman Center for Internet & Society).

Steve Schultze discusses the convergence of pop culture with political action as it creates a new, networked form of participatory democracy. The discussion is a primer for the Beyond Broadcast 2007 Conference that will take place on February 24th at MIT.